


Longing

by Lauralot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Brainwashing, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Dark, Gen, Nothing is okay, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 17:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6763285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Ready to comply.</i>
</p>
<p>In a world without the Sokovia Accords, Steve brings Bucky to the Avengers.  Tony makes a startling discovery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longing

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up in the early hours of the morning unable to fall back asleep and full of _Civil War_ feelings. This is the result.
> 
> There are spoilers for the film within the fic.

_“Longing. Rusted. Seventeen.  Daybreak.  Furnace.  Nine.  Benign.  Homecoming.  One.  Freight car. Soldier?”_

_“Ready to comply.”_

*

When Steve first brings Barnes to the compound, he’s quiet. Withdrawn. Nothing like the man from Dad’s stories. He won’t meet Tony’s eyes and he lingers behind Steve, drawing in on himself until he seems half his size.

He’ll just speak to Steve. The only thing Tony can hear him say in that first day is a low “You shouldn’t have brought me here.”

In the following days it all comes out. That Barnes can remember everything HYDRA forced him to do. That he wakes up screaming every night. That he’s afraid to be around Steve and his friends because he insists that he’s a trap waiting to be sprung.

It’s Steve who finds the red book.

*

_“Longing. Rusted. Seventeen.  Daybreak.  Furnace.  Nine.  Benign.  Homecoming.  One.  Freight car. Soldier?”_

_“Ready to comply.”_

*

Tony had thought that Steve would stop tearing through HYDRA bases now that he has Barnes. His friend is back, and shouldn’t that take the tension from his shoulders? Ebb at least some of the exhaustion out of his eyes?

Instead, the weight pressing down Steve seems to grow incrementally every day. He gets thinner. The skin around his eyes, darker. As if he’s trying to take in all of Barnes’s suffering himself.

Tony has no idea how he found the old Russian handler. All he knows is that Steve had still been shaking with rage when he got back.

“I found it, Buck,” Steve says, forcing a smile. “We’ll find a way to break through this stuff, I swear. You’ll be free. You don’t have to worry.”

And for the first time since he got here, Barnes smiles back.

*

_“Longing. Rusted. Seventeen.  Daybreak.  Furnace.  Nine.  Benign.  Homecoming.  One.  Freight car. Soldier?”_

_“Ready to comply.”_

*

Sam reads up on deprogramming. They try again and again, reading the list of trigger words as Barnes tries to fight it off.

“Every time, I didn’t want to do it,” Barnes says one day. Sam’s left the lab to get a first aid kit; Barnes had started clawing at himself to try and regain control. “But they could shut me off. I was awake, but I was just...gone. It was almost a relief when I went back to the US and they just burned everything out of my head. It hurt too much for me to focus on what they were taking then.”

There’s clumps of his hair stuck in the grooves of his metal fingers.

Tony doesn’t answer. What can he possibly say to ease that hell?

He’s always been a tinkerer. Now he spends his free days and most nights digging through all the HYDRA info that Natasha dumped online, breaking through encryptions. Maybe something in there can help Barnes. It was awful enough waking up with a body full of shrapnel, relying on a car battery to stay alive. Tony can’t imagine what it’s like to have your mind turn on you too, to be aware of it happening.

And when he spends his nights at the computers, Tony dwells a little less on Pepper’s absence.

Life at the compound’s fallen in stride when Tony finds the 1991 mission report.

*

_“Longing. Rusted. Seventeen.  Daybreak.  Furnace.  Nine.  Benign.  Homecoming.  One.  Freight car. Soldier?”_

_“Ready to comply.”_

*

Sam’s reading through the list. Steve’s murmuring, soothing, trying to talk Barnes back to lucidity.

It seems a thousand miles away.

Tony’s ears are ringing. His vision swims, hand sliding off the mouse.

_Asset reported initial crash not fatal. Inflicted head trauma onto primary target. Strangled secondary target._

His mom. Barnes strangled his mom. _Barnes._

Tony’s standing up. He’s not thinking. All he can see is Barnes, and his vision’s as red as the star on the murderer’s arm.

“ _Soldat_ ,” Sam says.

Barnes’s face is blank. Tony can’t hear him over the blood boiling, but he knows the familiar refrain. _Ready to comply_.

“Cut out your heart,” Tony says. His voice is steady.

And because Barnes has no knife, he tears a plate from his own arm, snapping it to make a sharp edge.

Of course it doesn’t work. Chaos erupts before Barnes can even slice through his shirt, with Steve tackling him, pleading and screaming. Sam sounds the alarm before he joins Steve in the struggle, and it isn’t long before everyone’s there and Wanda pulls the makeshift knife away in an orb of glowing energy. Natasha stabs Barnes with a syringe, and soon he’s out cold. He looks peaceful.

He doesn’t deserve it.

The shot keeps him out for the better part of a day. By the time Barnes regains consciousness, Steve’s already packed and ready to go.

“We’re going back to Brooklyn,” he tells Barnes, brushing the man’s hair back like he’s a child without blood on his hands. “You’ll like it there. You’ll be safe.”

Tony expects them to leave without a word to him, but Steve stops on their way out, staring. Tony didn’t know his eyes could look so cold.

“You owe him an apology,” Steve says. He’s trembling, hands clenched at his side like he doesn’t trust himself not to crush Tony’s throat.

It hurts when Tony laughs. “He murdered my parents.” How can Steve be so self-righteous as to pretend he’s got the moral high ground?

Barnes hangs his head, silent.

“I won’t lose him again,” Steve says.

They leave without looking back. Of course Steve doesn’t care about losing Tony.


End file.
